The mounds of kelp that recently washed onto local beaches point to a thriving offshore ecosystem created by restoration efforts over the past decade, experts say.

Ten years ago, there was practically no kelp off Orange County’s coast. Pollution and an overabundance of predators such as sea urchins had decimated the kelp forests, killing 80 percent of what Southern California had a century ago.

But over the past decade, environmentalists and others planted nearly 5 acres of kelp along coastal Southern California. They planted lab-grown kelp, transplanted healthy kelp from existing beds, released kelp spores and removed kelp predators, namely sea urchins, which can take over and obliterate a kelp forest if left unchecked.

Those efforts seem to have paid off: The kelp is back.

“This is just a sign of how healthy our kelp forest has become. Just 10 years ago, there was almost no kelp on the Orange County coast,” said Ray Hiemstra, associate director of programs for Orange County Coastkeeper, who has worked on kelp restoration for 15 years.

I used to take Pacific Kelp powder when I first got into healthy living. I still take kelp tablets, I'd recommend them to anyone, though they're derived from the waters off Iceland nowadays.
Pacific kelp is so contaminated with toxins it can't be used any more. And this before the nuclear contamination ...

Click on MESSAGES in the upper left corner. This will let you review the ALERTS; All readings above 100 CPM, or triple normal background. There have been several excedences from Hawaii to California and even Colorado and the Midwest. Duration has been short, but it is emissions from Fukushima.

The supplement companies I use haven't used pacific kelp for a couple of years or so as it didn't/doesn't meet their purity criteria.
As I said, the kelp I use is harvested from Icelandic waters.
Though kelp is also harvested from Norwegian and Canadian (East Coast) waters.

I can't say if US supplement companies are still using Pacific/West Coast kelp. Frankly, I would be incredulous if they were.

Kelp is very good for your garden too. I used to get kelp, from a beach. I'd spread it between rows of plants in a veggie garden. Great minerals. The salt did not seem to bother them either. Problem is in transporting them. Must be in plastic or the car paint will suffer.

__________________
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- Jim

"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched — they must be felt with the heart." — Helen Keller

Most interested people have learned this by now, but it is worth repeating.

Quote:

Most interested people have learned this by now, but it is worth repeating. Even in the absence of Fukushima or the nuclear power industry, and even going back in time before the Industrial Revolution, men and woman have been, and are being bombarded with radiation as we read and write this, which is of mostly cosmic origin, and this "background radiation" represents almost all of the radiation count levels being detected on the network. And since the human species has not only survived, but even thrived amidst this background radiation for thousands of years, a reasonable person (but not everyone) might conclude that this normal background radiation is not harmful.Background radiation is a random event, and this is why the CPM levels on the Monitoring Stations jump around erratically. This fact is the basis for a cautionary note. The single most common mistake in radiation detection is to confuse a spike in background radiation with radiation from a specific object. How do I know this? I am guilty myself - when introduced to Geiger counters many years ago. Therefore, when using a Geiger counter that is sensitive enough to detect background radiation in the first place (not all are), you must draw conclusions about potential radiation from a specific object only on the basis of a sustained reading in excess of background.One must be in much closer proximity to a radioactive object to get a detection than one would normally think. As an example, I keep a high grade sample of radioactive ore in my office (my choice only, not recommended for anyone else) for testing purposes. Now, that sample is a pure crystal of Uraninite about an inch around, which is highly radioactive, by definition, and even with that, I must approach to within about 2 feet before my counter starts to register.

But wait, there's more:

Quote:

Radiation Levels in Japan - A Monitoring Station that will soon be joining the Radiation Network sent me a link to a You Tube video filming the journey of some brave Japanese reporters all the way to the Fukushima plant, with radiation detectors mounted on their car dashboard: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp9iJ3pPuL8&feature=player_embedded
If their readings are reliable, they demonstrate how far radiation from a partial meltdown can travel. I list below a sampling of their readings in uSv/hr, along with conversions into uR/hr and CPM so that you can see how these readings would relate to our National Radiation Map:Proximity (miles)uSv/hrmR/hruR/hrCPM (See chart http://www.radiationnetwork.com/Archive1.htm) We in the 48 states are 5,000 miles away from Fukushima, so we are seeing little to no elevation of environmental radiation counts from the disaster. But the point is this - if a similar incident were to occur in the US, God forbid, the column on the right shows what CPM levels you would be seeing on the National Radiation Map from those Monitoring Stations located in similar proximity to a Fukushima like event. You can observe that even 19 miles away, the corresponding CPM level is well above our Map's Alert level of 100, so extrapolating from this, I suspect that even 50 miles away, some of ourhigh count stations would be triggering Alerts. This goes directly to my point below about the Relevance of our Radiation Network - see update from 3/20/11.

Once again, unless we're auditioning for the role of Chicken Little at the community playhouse, please exercise some restraint.

Opinion and conjecture will always fail in the face of science and research.

I had read somewhere that the banana radiation myth had come from measuring the banana on a granite counter, which has a slight amount of radiation, but I cannot find it right now. Regardless, it is far less radiation than the 33cpm from normal background.

I continue to hope we learn from our mistakes, but the recent USA elections tell me that we don't. Never the less, I also hope that nuclear power will work. I think our engineers and scientists will someday find a use for the waste.

Being in the computer industry for a lifetime, I recognise that human error is by far the weakest link. Maybe someday robots will run these nuclear plants, with only human oversight.